780 yards There is a patch in this stage which can be very muddy and after very heavy rain almost impassable.You may prefer, after seeing the first two items shown here below and above, to return to Knook the way you came and resume the walk at Stage 13. Turn left down a track just after the cottages. ( You will see a plaque with No 131 on the wall ). Ahead of you to the left you will see the remains of an old sluice gate which still had, when this photo above was taken, a rotten bit of wood at the top. These remains give an idea of the scale and sophistication of the irrigation scheme in place to flood the water meadows . The flat fields you now see were then more like a Dutch landscape with ditches. Nearby is a pile of masonry (see the image below) This may have been dumped by an errant lorry driver from miles away but they usually choose more remote locations for that.This is more likely to be some relic of the waterworks dumped in the nearest convenient spot.The curve suggests it being designed to take water.The importance of the irrigation of the meadows is reflected in a clause in a lease in 1821 from the landowner Sir William A Court to Mr William Flower for the mill that Sir William kept control of the hatches for drowning the meadows.
Turn right and then after a few yards go through a metal gate into the open field. At this point if there has been heavy rain it may be advisable to return as suggested above. If you continue with stage 12 as s you walk through the field you will get a good view of Garstons below in origin a fishing lodge for the summer built in a Tudor style. It was built on land with fishing rights on land bought from the Heytesbury Estate which sold a lot of land in the 1920's. Garstons is an old place name - Garston's Field appears on a map of 1774.. The house has perhaps a unique distinction of two connections with the Titanic through two separate families who have lived there. They both had relations on the doomed liner. She survived and he drowned.
The next image of trees is a spot,some 320 yards from the gate, where you may be able if the vegetation is not too long to spot some masonry surviving from the irrigation scheme.
Below are some substantial remains of the irrigation scheme a little further along.
Turn diagonally left at the next field aiming for the metal gate in the far left corner. You will arrive back at the River Wylye, Turn left for 20 yards to look at this concrete bridge (below) which is survivor of one thrown across the Wylye by Allied troops preparing for D-day in 1944. They used what came to hand including it seems, old railway tracks probably left over from the temporary railways built in World War to service the army camps in the valley.There were two more similar bridges further down the Wylye one of which has been replaced recently and the other removed. Beer barrels filled with concrete were used in one of them.
There are now two cottages here where there were once four by the river in 1887 as shown on a map of that date.. The other two were to the left of this - a reminder that the countryside has known periods of depopulation. Below the large and wide block of masonry under the bridge suggests that there may have been a sluice here once.An old photo suggests that the river immediately downstream had higher banks in the early twentieth century which would fit this hypothesis. Cross the bridge Walk though Knook and turn right back towards Upton Lovell.
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